This was one of those mangas I didn’t want to read. I’m not a fan of
shoujo or slice of life genre, but recently I noticed this manga got popular
and I read a lot of comments saying it had a sad story. That was enough to catch
my eye. At first I wanted to watch the anime before reading the manga, but
after noticing the manga was complete and had few chapters, I changed my mind.
I had no idea what it was about, but reading it was a good decision.

Orange tells us the story of Takamiya Naho, who, in the spring
when she was 16, receives a strange, but detailed letter from herself, ten
years in the future. At first she thinks the letter is a prank, but then the
things written in the letter actually happen, including the new transfer
student that sits next to her in class, Naruse Kakeru. In the letter, her 26-year-old
self tells her 16-year-old self that her biggest regret is that Kakeru is no
longer with them in the future, and asks her to watch him closely.

I must say that the plot hooked me since the beginning,
first because there was the mystery of how did the letter traveled in time;
second, I wanted to know what happened to Kakeru; and thirdly, Naho’s
decisions, at first she ignores the letter’s advice and that brings big
consequences, later on she must decide to follow or not the letter’s advice. It’s
really interesting to see her making decisions and to see how everything
changes little by little because of it.

From left to right: Suwa, Azusa, Chino, Kakeru, Naho, and Hagita.

Orange has lovable characters. There is a group of six
friends, including Naho and Kakeru. All of them are really kind with Kakeru
since his first day, and they try to help Naho to get closer to him. This
includes Suwa, who is in love with Naho. I’m used to see in shoujo mangas that
there is always a fake or mean friend in the group of friends, but I was gladly
surprised with this manga lacking of that. The six friends were honest and had
a true friendship. All characters have a diverse and unique personality and design,
it’s really easy to remember and to identify them. In some mangas I’ve read it’s
hard to remember the names or design of the protagonist’s friends, because they
are backup characters only with a generic design or few lines.

As I said before in the synopsis, this manga is about
regrets, everyone has regrets of the decisions they made or the things they didn’t
do. I found that really interesting because it made the characters feel more
real and relatable. Also, this manga touches an interesting topic: depression. I
had never read something like that in a manga before.

Despite this manga is supposed to be shoujo, romance is
not the main focus of it. I really liked that because I’m not very fond of shoujo
manga and that makes it different to others of the same genre.

Another aspect I appreciated was the art style, the
drawings are visually appealing, and so is the character’s design. About the structure
of the story, it is well developed, it keeps you hooked and intrigued till beginning
to end, it doesn’t have unnecessary chapters.

The 16 year old Naho, and the 26 year old Naho.

The only complaint I have is the ending, I thought of giving
it a 4.5 stars rating, but I don’t know how to get a half star symbol, so 5
stars. I felt the ending was kind of rushed and abrupt, I would’ve liked more
explanations or a good epilogue saying what happened with the characters. The
manga doesn’t explain at all how the letter traveled to the past, and there is
no romance at the end. Also the author doesn’t say what happened with the guys
from the future, nor in what way the present guys changed their futures.

This manga has an anime adaptation of the same name, it
is currently airing. It also has a live action movie.

If you want to read a short, concise and entertaining
manga, I highly recommend this one. It’s a different type of shoujo with an
intriguing story and well developed and relatable characters. Although I didn’t
like the ending at all, everything else is great.